I Confess is one of Hitchcock's weakest films. It takes a premise that was probably old in 1951 and does absolutley nothing new with it. Here's the premise: a man confesses to Father Logan, a Catholic priest (Montogomry Clift, in a sensitive performance that's the best thing about the film) that he commited a murder. Unfortuanley for the priest, a woman is in love with him, which through the machinations of the plot, make the police seem to think that Monty did it. You know exactly what's going to happen next.
The first half hour of the picture is actually very good, as it seems that Hitchcock is going for more of a character study of Father Logan than an actual thriller. But once the plot starts moving the movie goes downhill, as Hitchcock goes to the same "Wrong Man" well he went before (and would go again) with much better sucess. Making things worse is the fact that the movie was severly censored by the Production Code. The clause that forbad negative portrayals of clergymen ment that Father Logan could not even be tempted to reveal the truth to the police, meaning that he comes off a saint rather than a human. The play on which the film was based, Paul Anthelme's Our Two Consciences, which I am not familer with was not considered to be melodramatic and weak, the film translation repeates the same flaws. Adding to the weirdness is the fact that the movie is for some reason set in Quebec, meaning that we are treated to a conucopia of accents- some actors are American, some are Quebecian (Quebeci?), some are Americans with bad French accents, and some are German. Go figure.
As I said earlier, the method performance by Montgomery Cliff is the best part about the film, creating a three demensional character from a once-deminsional script. Anne Baxter as the woman who loves the preist just plan sucks in her part- melodramtic and unreal. Karl Malden is very good as the dectective, one of the positive things about the film is that for once we understand exactly how reasonable person could come to the wrong conclusion. The rest of the acting decent and nothing more. The only other exceptional element of the film is the music by Dmitri Tomkin, he wrote another great score in 1951, for Howard Hawk's The Thing.
Although the movie is not a total wash, it's safe to say that this is a film for French New Wave directors and Hitchcock fanatics only. I say French New Wave directors because in a poll taken a few years after the film was released, the French filmmakers surved claimed that this what Hitchcock's greatest achievement- making it better than The Loger, Blackmail, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorius, and Strangers on a Train among others (I learned this from the docmentary on the DVD). My theory: they had a thing for Quebec.
I Confess (1953)